Sales of a 15 per cent portion of English public forests will go ahead within the next four years, raising an expected £100m, the Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman, said yesterday.

She expressed concern that terms governing the sale do not allow enough protection for access and public benefits, but told the Commons Environment Select Committee that the sales would go ahead within the spending review, which runs to 2015.

Mrs Spelman also defended a consultation on plans to sell the rest of the public forests, which sparked fierce opposition and was dropped last month. "I simply thought it was right to give the public the chance to be consulted about the future of the forest estate," she told MPs.

Shortly before the consultation was dropped, the previously announced sales of 15 per cent of public forests were suspended over concerns about protecting the benefits they provide. An independent panel has been set up to examine the future of England's forests.

Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman told MPs "I am sorry, we got this one wrong" as she abandoned plans to offload England's public forest estate to companies, communities and charities.

The Commons was told she was halting the public consultation into the future of the 258,000-hectare estate, just 24 hours after David Cameron admitted he was unhappy with the plans at Prime Minister's Questions.

Is the Prime Minister for turning? When it comes to the NHS reforms, he just might be, ifthe Times' page three lead(paywall) is to be believed. In a story headed ‘Cameron puts brake on NHS reforms’, it reports that Downing Street want to make the 2013 handover of commissioning responsibility a ‘goal rather than a deadline’.

The embattled Mr Lansley, however, is definitely not for turning, with a ‘Department of Healthsource’ telling the paper: ‘A clear timetable for implementation has been set out in the bill and we intend to stick to it.’ Watch this space closely.

The Daily Mailreports a BowelcancerUK survey which found that two-thirds of men and almost half of women could not name a symptom of the disease.

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About Me

Before my retirement, I practised child psychiatry for 30 years, 25 of which as a consultant and director. After these years of clinical practice, I felt compelled to tell my stories as I have my doubts as to the validity of some of the assertions of the medical world.
I am the author of the book The Cockroach Catcher, which is based on my work as an NHS child psychiatrist. Contact me on: cockroachcatcher at gmail dot com